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Curtis 
"Party  and  Patronage" 


THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 


PARTY  and  PATRONAGE" 


AN    ADDRESS 


PREPARED    FOR    THE    ANNUAL    MEETING    OF 


The  National  Civil-Service  Reform  League 


(APRIL   28,    1892.) 


BY  THE    PRESIDENT 


GEORGE   WILLIAM   CURTIS 


PUBLISHED    FOR     THE 

NATIONAL    CIVIL-SERVICE    REFORM    Lm.u*JE 
1892 


PRESS   OK 

(  ,i ,,,.    Goi  rSBl  RG1  i     Pi  '  !■ 
I  i   MURRAY  ST.,  N    V. 


■A 


PARTY   AND    PATRONAGE. 


An  Address  at  the  Annual  Meeting  of the  National  Civil- 
Service  Reform  League  in  Baltimore,  April  28,  1892. 


By  George  William  Curtis. 


If  Charles  Lamb  had  been  an  American  by  birth,  as  he  is 
certainly  an  American  by  affectionate  literary  adoption,  he  would 
have  added  probably  to  his  list  of  Popular  Fallacies  the  pleasing 
delusion  that  a  republic  is  a  self-adjusting  system  of  liberty  and 
equal  rights,  and  that  to  upset  a  throne  is  to  set  up  justice.  When 
Voltaire  was  insulted  by  the  London  mob  for  being  a  French- 
man, an  offence  which  John  Bright  said  is  forgiven  by  John  Bull 
only  with  the  greatest  reluctance,  the  Frenchman  turned  upon  the 
steps  as  he  entered  the  door,  and,  with  exquisite  sarcasm,  appealed 
to  the  nobleness  of  the  English  character,  and  complimented  the 
mob  upon  their  institutions  and  love  of  liberty.  Voltaire  knew 
that  in  England  the  surest  appeal  was  to  the  national  self-com- 
placency, a  virtue  which  is  not  wanting  to  the  English-speaking 
race  wherever  it  is  found. 

But  although  we  may  justly  claim  that  a  republic,  upon  the 
whole,  secures  fairer  play  for  every  man  than  any  other  govern- 
ment, it  is  not  necessary,  as  in  a  disputed  election,  to  claim  every- 
thing. However  it  may  be  in  Maryland,  in  New  York  the 
establishment  of  a  republic  by  our  fathers,  while  it  has  secured  a 
fairer  general  chance  for  all  men,  lias  not  yet  developed  universal 
political  virtue  or  absolutely  honest  government.     Like  all  excel- 


103M? 


lent  human  devices,  the  administration  of  government  must  be 
constantly  and  carefully  repaired  and  improved.  If  a  locomotive 
upon  a  railroad  must  be  watched  with  incessant  care  and  be 
scrupulously  oiled  and  burnished,  in  order  effectively  to  do  its 
work;  if  even  a  chronometer  must  be  regularly  wound,  if  it  is  to 
report  accurately  the  time  of  day  ;  if  a  slight  derangement  of  the 
machinery  brings  the  huge,  humming  factory  to  silence,  it  is  a 
fond  delusion  that  popular  forms  of  government  alone  will  secure 
honest  and  equitable  administration. 

In  the  nineteenth  year  of  our  constitutional  union  Fulton 
essayed  with  steam  to  force  his  little  vessel,  the  Clermont,  up  the 
Hudson  River  to  Albany.  It  was  an  experiment  in  mechanics, 
but  no  more  an  experiment  than  the  republic  in  politics.  Inces- 
sant care,  comprehensive  observation,  intelligence,  discretion, 
shrewd  modification  of  details,  perpetual  deference  to  the  hints  of 
experience,  a  thoughtful  care  which  has  not  yet  ceased,  all  these 
have  developed  Fulton's  struggling,  doubtful  Clermont,  pushing 
its  way  upon  a  smooth  stream  to  Albany  in  thirty-two  hours,  into 
the  magnificent  marine  palace  that  crosses  the  turbulent  ocean  in 
five  times  thirty-two  hours.  Much  more  was  necessary  to  this 
marvellous  development  than  the  invention  of  the  steam  engine 
and  the  application  of  steam  to  navigation.  Very  much  more  is 
necessary  to  honest  government,  to  the  security  of  liberty,  the 
equality  of  rights,  and  the  general  welfare,  than  a  republican  form 
of  government.  Among  the  Zulus  to-day  a  republic  would  hardly 
prosper.  In  Bourbonized  France  a  hundred  years  ago  a  republic 
was  a  saturnalia  of  wrong  and  blood.  Wendell  Phillips,  seeing 
only  the  cause  and  the  result,  the  inhuman  tyranny  that  produced 
the  French  revolution,  and  the  relaxed  grasp  of  despotism  that  fol- 
lowed  it.  (ailed  it  "  the  most  unstained  and  wholly  perfect  blessing 
Europe  has  had  in  modern  times."  However  that  may  be  from 
the  orator's  point  of  view,  the  French  republic  of  1793,  the 
fierce  outbreak  of  a  people  imbruted  by  unspeakable  oppression, 
was  itself  an  awful  revenge  in   kind.      Even   great  as  is  the  prog- 


ress  and  marvellous  the  recuperative  force  of  the  French  people, 
and  fair  their  future  prospect,  the  republic  is  built  upon  volcanic 
ground,  and  may  yet  reel  with  earthquake  shocks. 

Mont  Blanc,  the  sovereign  Alp,  has  not  a  charm  to  stay  the 
morning  star,  and  the  American  republic,  greatest  and  best  of  all 
republics,  has  no  more  power  than  the  Roman  republic  by  its 
name  alone  to  secure  freedom  and  wise  progress.  It  is  but  an 
instrument,  and  its  beneficent  efficiency  depends  upon  the  intelli- 
gence, character  and  conscience  of  the  people  who  wield  it,  and 
upon  the  promptitude  and  skill  with  which  it  is  kept  in  repair  and 
adjusted  to  the  changing  conditions  of  its  operations.  The  de- 
mand of  reform  in  methods  of  administration  of  government, 
therefore,  is  not  revolutionary,  nor  Quixotic,  nor  surprising.  It 
is  the  sign  of  a  healthy  and  progressive  political  life.  It  is  not 
exceptional,  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  familiar  in  every  kind  of 
human  activity.  It  is  the  impulse  of  the  instinct  which  constantly 
seeks  something  better, 

"  The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star, 
Of  the  night  for  the  morrow  ;" 

the  instinct  which  stimulates  medical  science  to  the  discovery  of 
more  certain  relief  for  the  physical  pain  and  suffering  of  man- 
kind, which  produces  endless  mechanical  inventions,  increases 
the  knowledge  of  occult  forces  and  their  practical  application  to 
human  convenience,  arrests  the  vast  and  needless  waste  of  vital- 
ity that  lesser  knowledge  cannot  stay  ;  which  lightens  labor  and 
lengthens  life  by  greater  command  of  time  and  space. 

Why  should  this  beneficent  inspiration  be  lost  to  the  sphere 
of  politics  which  is  not  a  less  universal  concern  than  all  these  ? 
When  human  ingenuity  is  busily  improving  sewing  machines  and 
type-writers,  steam  engines,  telephones  and  electric  lights,  and 
every  mechanical  and  industrial  process,  why  should  methods  of 
administration  and  government  not  be  supposed  susceptible  of 


Improvement?  As  the  Arabian  Nights  and  the  old  fairy  stories 
arc  lmt  delightful  prophecies  of  our  modern  world  of  larger  intelli- 
gence and  shrewder  wit,  where  we  are  wafted  from  place  to  place 
upon  an  enchanted  carpet  and  in  a  chair  of  magic,  where  Ispahan 
converses  with  Istamboul,  and  a  drop  of  elixir  deadens  pain,  so 
Plato's  republic,  and  Sir  Thomas  More's  Utopia,  and  Harring- 
ton's (  )(  eana,  and  all  the  ideal  commonwealths  of  the  poets  and 
philosophers  are  but  vague  forecasts  of  states  not  further  from 
ours  than  ours  from  those  of  early  history. 

Yet  the  world  is  not  a  garden  of  the  Hesperides  where  we 
have  only  to  raise  our  hands  and  pluck  the  golden  fruit  of  prog- 
ress. Progress,  on  the  contrary,  is  everywhere  the  Golden  Fleece 
to  be  won  only  by  hard  contention,  by  taming  fire  breathing  bulls 
of  stupidity,  by  slaying  dragons  of  malignity,  and  by  victoriousl) 
withstanding  hosts  of  slanderers  and  liars  sprung  from  the  teeth 
of  venomous  serpents.  If  the  application  of  the  humane  disco's 
cries  of  science  and  the  advance  of  the  comfort  and  convenience 
of  modern  civilization  have  been  resisted  as  stoutly  as  if  they  were 
a  pestilence  or  a  consuming  cloud  of  locusts,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  every  political  reform  is  ridiculed  as  visionary  and  denounced 
as  incendiary.  This  has  been  so  universally  the  welcome  of  im- 
provement in  every  department  of  human  interest  that  it  may  be 
said  almost  that  the  presumption  is  in  favor  of  every  proposed 
reform,  and  that  reputed  quacks  and  tiresome  fanatics  are  prob- 
ably new  Columbuses  and  Galileos  and  Jenners,  the  latest  bene- 
factors of  mankind.  It  is  this  jealous  distrust  of  progress  which 
led  so  sagacious  a  statesman  as  Lord  Shelburne  to  say :  "The 
moment  the  independence  of  America  is  agreed  to  by  our  gov- 
ernment the  sun  of  Great  Britian  is  set.  and  we  shall  no  longer  be 
a  powerful  or  respectable  people,"  and  even  Richard  Henry  Lee 
<  ailed  the  framers  of  the  Ameri<  an  Constitution  "  visionary  young 
men."  These  gentlemen  were  very  positive,  but  it  was  only  their 
rhetorii  al  way  of  saying  ■•  here  is  a  change,"  and  change  to  cer- 
tain conservative  temperaments  means  only   mischief.     But  the 


challenge  of  conservatism  to  the  spirit  of  progress  has  this  ad- 
vantage, that  it  compels  every  change  to  prove  its  right  by  show- 
ing its  reason. 

The  uncertain  fortune  of  reform  in  politics,  fluctuating  be- 
tween sudden  success  and  long  delay,  is  well  explained  by  a  re- 
mark of  Fisher  Ames  that  "  the  only  constant  agent  in  political 
affairs  are  the  passions  of  men  ;  "  and  by  what  Gardiner,  the  latest 
and  masterly  historian  of  the  great  civil  war  in  England,  says  of 
the  Presbyterianism  of  Prynne,  that  it  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the? 
average  intellect  of  the  day,  "  which  looked  with  suspicion  on 
ideas  not  yet  stamped  with  the  mint  mark  of  custom,  the  feeling 
which  unconsciously  exists  in  the  majority  of  mankind  of  repug- 
nance against  all  who  aim  at  higher  thinking  or  purer  living  than 
are  deemed  sufficient  by  their  contemporaries,  and  who  usually,  in 
the  opinion  of  their  contemporaries,  contrive  to  miss  their  aim." 
But  existing  order  consists  always  of  ideas  which  are  stamped 
with  the  mint  mark  of  custom,  and  the  hope  of  progress,  there- 
fore, lies  in  the  ideas  which  are  not  yet  authenticated  at  the  mint. 
The  Bourbon  despotism  is  France,  the  Stuart  abuses  in  England, 
the  supremacy  of  the  Crown  in  Colonial  American,  had  the  mint 
mark  of  custom.  Had  no  other  coinage  been  demanded  these 
coined  abuses  would  have  remained  the  sole  currency.  Political 
progress,  and  with  it  larger  liberty  and  higher  general  welfare,  are 
secured  only  by  bringing  fresh  bullion  to  be  stamped  with  the 
mint  mark.  In  the  ever-spreading  tree  of  political  life  it  is  dis- 
trust of  the  established  order,  not  acquiescence  in  it,  which  is  the 
irritation  of  the  stem  that  shows  the  spot  where  the  new  growth 
will  spring. 

Progress  in  the  legal  security  of  liberty  has  been  always  ef- 
fected by  regulating  the  executive  power  which  is  the  final  force 
in  all  politically  organized  communities.  The  Great  Charter,  the 
Grand  Remonstrance,  the  Petition  of  Right  in  England,  were 
all  declarations  against  the  arbitrary  exercise  of  executive 
power,   and    steadily     diminished   by    jealous  popular  care,  this 


s 

power  gradually  became  mainly  the  arbitrary  control  of  patronage. 
For  this  arbitrary  control  the  English  tory  has  always  a  plausible 
plea,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  when  England  had 
been  freshly  reminded  by  Culloden  and  the  romantic  enthusiasm 
for  Prime  Charles  that  the  Hanoverian  throne  was  not  yet  secure, 
David  Hume  in  his  essay  upon  the  Independency  of  Parliaments, 
made  a  better  argument  for  patronage  under  the  British  Constitu- 
tion than  could  ever  be  made  for  it  under  ours.  It  was  essential, 
he  said,  to  the  balance  of  the  constitution.  The  House  of  Com- 
mons did  not  assert  its  supremacy  over  the  other  branches  of  the 
government  only  because  it  did  not  think  it  its  interest  to  do 
so.  The  patronage  of  the  crown,  he  said,  with  the  aid  of  honest 
members  alone  maintained  the  royal  power.  That  is  to  say, 
the  King  bought  votes  enough  to  supplement  the  votes  of  his 
friends.  "  We  may  call  this  influence,"  he  says,  for  Hume  was  an 
honest  man,  "by  the  invidious  appellations  of  corruption  and  de- 
pendence, but  some  degree  and  some  kind  of  it  are  inseparable 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  constitution,  and  necessary  to  the 
preservation  of  our  mixed  government." 

Mr.  Lecky  points  out  the  coincidence  of  Hume's  view  with 
that  of  Paley,  who  attributes  the  loss  of  the  American  colonies  to 
the  want  of  royal  patronage  extensive  enough,  as  he  says, "  to  coun- 
teract that  restless,  arrogating  spirit  which  in  popular  assemblies, 
when  left  to  itself,  will  never  brook  an  authority  that  checks  and 
interferes  with  its  own."  This  is  the  tribute  of  the  moral  Philosopher 
to  the  necessity  and  reasonableness  of  the  spoils  system,  a  tribute 
which  is  echoed  in  the  political  gossip  according  to  Tammany  Hall 
as  recently  set  forth  under  the  name  of  the  eminent  political 
moralist,  Mr.  Richard  Croker,  in  the  Arorth  American  Review, 
a  plea,  I  may  add,  which  was  promptly  and  thoroughly  exposed 
by  our  friend  and  associate,  Mr.  Dorman  B.  Eaton. 

Our  fathers  were  largely  children  of  the  Englishmen  who 
with  great  gyves  of  reform  bound  the  royal  prerogative;  and  the 
American   Declaration  of  Independence  in  legitimate  succession 


from  Magna  Charta  and  the  Grand  Remonstrance  was  an  arraign- 
ment of  the  abuse  of  executive  power.  Our  Colonial  politics 
were  in  large  part  a  contest  over  patronage  between  the  royal 
governors  and  the  colonial  legislatures,  The  destruction  of  the 
statue  of  George  the  Third  in  the  Bowling  Green  at  New  York, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution,  was  symbolic  of  the  instinc- 
tive distrust  of  executive  power  by  the  colonists.  The  crown  was 
the  emblem  of  executive  oppression,  and  when  the  Republic  be- 
gan in  the  formation  of  the  first  state  constitution  during  the 
revolution  the  chief  distinction  of  those  constitutions  was  at  the  at- 
tempted restraint  of  that  power  by  distribution  between  the  Leg- 
islature or  the  Council  and  the  Governor.  With  the  same  jeal- 
ousy the  framers  of  the  Constitution  in  establishing  the  National 
Government  limited  the  executive  power  of  appointment.  They 
provided  that  only  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate 
should  the  President  appoint  certain  specified  officers,  while  Con- 
gress should  provide  at  its  pleasure  for  the  appointment  of  others. 
The  Constitution  thus  reserves  to  the  Senate  a  practical  veto  upon 
the  appointing  power  and  to  Congress  the  designation  of  the 
methods  of  appointment  of  all  inferior  officers. 

The  people  had  assumed  their  own  government,  but  as  they 
could  not  administer  it  directly  it  was  administered  by  agents  se- 
lected by  party  or  the  organized  majority,  but  under  such  restric- 
tion as  the  whole  body  of  voters,  or  the  people,  might  impose. 
The  crown  had  vanished.  There  was  no  king  or  permanent 
executive.  There  were  a  President  and  Legislature  elected  by 
the  people  for  limited  terms.  But  the  practical  agency  of  the  gov- 
ernment was  party  and  whoever  might  be  elected  President,  party 
remained  in  the  administration  as  permanent  as  a  king  and  with 
the  same  control  of  the  executive  power.  But  the  executive  power 
whether  in  the  hands  of  a  king  or  a  party  does  not  change  its  na- 
ture. It  seeks  its  own  aggrandizement  and  cannot  safely  be  trusted. 
Buckle  says  that  no  man  is  wise  enough  and  strong  enough  to  be 
vested  with  absolute  authority.     It  fires  his  brain  and  maddens 


him.  But  this  which  is  true  of  an  individual  is  not  less  true  of  an 
aggregate  of  individuals  or  a  party.  A  party  or  a  majority  needs 
watching  as  much  as  a  king.  Indeed,  that  such  distrust  is  the 
lard  of  Democracy  against  Despotism  is  a  truth  as  old  as 
Demosthenes.  Like  a  sleuth  hound  distrust  must  follow  execu- 
tive power  however  it  may  double  and  whatever  form  it  may  as- 
sume. It  is  as  ninth  the  safeguard  of  popular  right  against  the 
will  of  a  party  as  against  the  prerogative  of  a  king.  Distrust  is, 
in  fact,  the   instinct    of  enlightened    political  sagacity  which  sees 

the  peril  of  popular  institutions  lies  in  the  abuse  of  the  forms 
of  popular  government.  The  great  common  place  of  our  politi- 
cal speech,  eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  liberty,  i<=  fundament- 
als true.  It  is  a  scripture  essential  to  political  salvation.  The 
demand  for  civil  service  reform  is  the  cry  of  that  eternal  vigilance 
ill  further  restriction  by  the  people  of  the  delegated  executive 
power. 

Civil  Service  Reform,  therefore,  is  but  another  successive  step 
in  the  development  of  liberty  under  law.  It  is  not  eccentric  nor 
revolutionary.  It  is  a  logical  measure  of  political  progress.  In  the 
light  of  larger  experience  and  adjusted  to  the  exigencies  of  a  repub- 
lic in  the  nineteenth  century  instead  of  a  monarchy  in  the  thirteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries,  in  the  spirit  of  the  wise  jealousy  of  the 

titution,  in  the  interest  of  free  institutions  and  of  honest  gov- 
ernment, it  proposes  to  restrict  still  further  the  executive  power 
as  <-\'-r«  ised  by  party.  It  is  a  measure  based  upon  the  observation 
of  a  century  during  which  government  by  party  has  developed 
condition  and  tendencies  and   perils   which  could  not  have  been 

en  in  detail,  although  at  the  beginning  of  party  government 
under  the  constitution,  Washington  said  of  party  spirit  "  it  exists 
under  different  shapes  in  all  governments,  more  or  less  stifled,  con- 
trolled or  repressed;  but  in  those  of  popular  form,  it  is  seen  in  its 
greatest  rankness  and  is  truly  their  worst  enemy." 

The  experience  of  an  enturyhas  justified  Washington's  words. 
The  superstition  of  divine  right  has  passed  from  a  king  to  a  party, 


and  the  old  fiction  of  the  law  in  monarchy  that  the  king  can  do 
no  wrong  has  become  the  practical  faith  of  great  multitudes 
in  this  republic  in  regard  to  party.  Armed  with  the  arbitrary 
power  of  patronage  party  overbears  the  free  expression  of  the 
popular  will  and  entrenches  itself  in  illicit  power.  It  makes  the 
whole  civil  service  a  drilled  and  disciplined  army  whose  living  de- 
pends upon  carrying  elections  at  any  cost  for  the  party  which  con- 
trols it.  Patronage  has  but  to  capture  the  local  primary  meeting 
and  it  commands  the  whole  party  organization.  Every  member 
of  the  party  must  submit  or  renounce  his  party  allegiance,  and 
with  it  the  gratification  of  his  political  ambition,  and  such  is  the 
malign  force  of  party  spirit  that  in  what  seems  to  him  a  desperate 
alternative  he  often  supports  men  whom  he  distrusts  and  methods 
which  he  despises  lest  his  party  should  be  defeated.  He  takes 
practically  the  position  that  party  loyality  requires  him  to  support 
one  party  with  bad  measures  and  unfit  candidates  rather  than  risk 
the  success  of  another  party  with  good  measures  and  suitable 
men. 

This  devotion  of  party,  not  to  the  ends  for  which  it  exists  but 
to  the  spoils  that  accompany  success  at  the  polls,  has  become 
so  absolute  that  it  has  produced  an  evil  greater  than  any  which 
party  proposes  to  remedy.  In  order  to  secure  and  maintain  party 
power,  a  corruption  has  been  introduced  which  involves  not  only 
the  whole  system  of  our  politics,  but  the  character  of  the  people. 
It  is  a  corruption  so  general  and  so  familiar  that  an  amendment 
to  the  constitution  is  proposed  in  Congress,  which  contemplates 
the  election  of  Senators  of  the  United  States  by  the  popular  vote 
of  the  State  instead  of  the  vote  of  the  Legislature,  and  the  argument 
gravely  urged  for  the  amendment  is  that  it  is  harder  to  corrupt  the 
whole  people  than  to  buy  a  legislature.  Familiar  incidents  of  the 
last  Presidential  campaign,  the  collection  of  an  immense  sum  of 
money  by  party  managers  to  be  spent  without  audit  or  accounting 
of  any  kind,  and  the  general  public  conviction  that  it  was  a  simple 
corruption  fund  not  only  spent  for  illicit  purposes,  but  by  which  high 


office  was  bought,  and  the  equally  general  conviction  that  if  the 
other  party  could  have  procured  the  same  sum  of  money  it  would 
have  done  the  same  thing,  show  how  wide-spread  the  evil  has 
become. 

A  New  York  morning  paper  of  the  highest  character  recently 
published  the  remark  of  a  conspicuous  politician  whose  name  was 
given,  that,  "two-fifths  of  the  Democratic  voters  of  the  State  are 
represented  in  conventions  by  delegates  selected  by  the  heads  of 
the  various  departments  in  New  York  and  King's  County,"  that 
is  to  say  in  the  cities  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn.  An  evening 
paper  of  the  same  day,  speaking  of  the  Republican  nomination 
for  the  Governorship  in  Rhode  Island,  said,  "  it  is  notorious  in 
the  State  that  every  Republican  candidate  must  pay  for  his  honor, 
and  the  price  has  heretofore  ranged  from  $20,000  to  $40,000. 
*  *  *  It  has  frequently  happened  that  a  second  assessment 
has  been  necessary  when  the  election  by  the  people  has  failed  and 
the  choice  has  fallen  upon  the  Legislature."  These  statements  are 
not  disputed  and  they  are  not  doubted.  They  are  read  languidly 
by  many  readers  as  illustrations  of  the  rottenness  of  politics. 
They  are  read  with  alarm  by  many  others  as  signs  of  a  taint  that 
will  rot  the  whole  system  if  not  extirpated.  The  wrong  is  not  pe- 
culiar to  any  party,  for  its  source  is  the  party  spirit  which  all 
parties  stimulate  and  Washington  foresaw.  The  Pot  indeed  sol- 
emnly rebukes  the  Kettle,  but  when  traders  in  mules  denounce 
traders  in  blocks  of  five  for  political  corruption,  Ave  instinctively 
recall  the  legendary  Roman  augurs  and  the  stage  direction  in 
Robert  the  Devil,  "  infernal  laughter." 

This  monstrous  development  of  the  party  system  in  a  Repub- 
lic while  it  might  have  been  vaguely  anticipated  could  not  have 
been  definitely  forseen.  The  American  who  had  served  under 
ington  in  the  field  and  had  voted  for  him  as  President,  al- 
though he  may  have  seen  in  the  malice  of  the  oposition  news- 
p  ipers  the  addex  tongue  of  faction,  would  have  smiled  to  hear  the 
suggestion  that  in   Republican   America,  the  party  proscriptions 


13 

and  excesses  of  Athens  and  Rome  and  Florence,  without  the 
slaughter,  might  be  revived  and  repeated.  Still  less  would  it  oc- 
cur to  him  that  a  Civil  Service  which  a  century  ago  in  the  whole 
Union  included  only  two  hundred  and  nine  post-masters  and  a 
handful  of  other  officers,  whose  tenure  was  their  fidelity  and 
efficiency,  would  suddenly  rise  like  the  Afrite  from  the  casket  in 
the  Arabian  tale,  into  a  gigantic  and  towering  form,  but  still  the 
supple  slave  of  reckless  party  power.  The  increase  of  population, 
the  vast  alien  addition  to  the  native  stock,  the  universal  extension 
of  male  adult  suffrage,  the  growth  of*  great  cities  of  heterogene- 
ous citizenship,  the  opening  of  enormous  opportunities  of  contracts 
and  political  money  making,  the  vast  consolidations  of  capital  not 
hesitating  to  attempt  for  their  purposes  the  bribery  of  legislatures, 
the  paralysis  of  the  national  conscience  for  a  generation  in  the 
defense  by  a  great  political  party  of  a  huge  moral  wrong,  and 
finally  a  long  and  relentless  civil  war, — all  these  were  yet  to  come, 
and  their  relation  to  an  enormous  increase  of  public  patronage, 
and  their  influence  upon  the  party  system,  could  not  be  fore- 
told. 

These  results,  however,  are  now  evident.  What  our  fathers 
could  not  guess,  we  can  see.  Party  which  is  properly  simply  the 
organization  of  citizens  who  agree  in  their  views  of  public  policy  to 
secure  the  enactment  of  their  views  in  law,  has  become  what  is  well 
called  a  machine,  which  controls  the  political  action  of  millions  of 
citizens  who  vote  for  candidates  that  the  machine  selects  and  for 
measures  which  the  machine  dictates  or  approves.  Servility  to 
party  takes  the  place  of  individual  independence  of  action.  So 
completely  does  it  consume  political  manhood  that  like  men  sud- 
denly hurried  from  their  warm  beds  into  the  night  air,  shivering 
and  chattering  in  the  cold,  even  intelligent  citizens  who  have  pro- 
tested against  their  party  machine  as  fraudulent  and  false,  and  an 
organized  misrepresentation  of  the  party  conviction  and  will,  declare 
that  if  their  protest  against  the  power  of  fraud  and  corruption  does 
not  avail  and  the  party  commands  them  to  yield,  they  will  bow 


14 

the  head  and  bend  the  knee  in  loyalty  to  fraud  and  corruption. 
The  despotism  of  the  machine  is  so  absolute  and  the  triumph  of 
the  party  so  supersedes  the  reason  and  person  of  the  party,  that 
we  have  now  readied  a  point  in  oiur  political  development,  when 
upon  the  most  vital  and  pressing  public  questions  parties  do  not 
even  know  their  own  opinions,  and  factions  of  the  same  party 
wrangle  fiercely  to  determine  by  a  majority  what  the  party  thinks 
and  proposes.  Meanwhile  so  completely  has  the  conception  of 
party,  as  merely  a  convenient  but  clumsy  agent  to  promote  cer- 
tain public  objects,  disappeared,  that  one  of  the  chief  journals  of 
the  country  recently  remarked,  with  entire  gravity,  that  it  found 
"  no  fault  with  conscientious  independence  in  politics,"  which  was 
like  announcing  with  lofty  forbearance  that  as  a  philosophic  mor- 
alist, it  found  no  fault  with  truth  telling  or  honest  dealing. 

The  recent  vivid  and  detailed  picture  of  political  corruption 
in  Maryland,  which  we  owe  to  the  distinguished  President  of  the 
Maryland  Civil  Service  Reform  Association,  one  of  the  earliest, 
most  steadfast,  and  most  effective  advocates  of  reform,  and  its 
companion  piece  depicting  political  corruption  in  Pennsylvania 
by  our  devoted  and  undaunted  friend  of  political  reform,  Mr. 
Herbert  Welsh,  whom  ravaged  Indians  bless,  show  how  com- 
pletely in  two  great  States  the  two  great  parties  of  the  country  by 
base  and  dishonest  methods  pervert  their  power  from  promoting 
the  public  benefit  to  fostering  their  own  aggrandizement.  I  am 
not  forgetting  Burke's  apothegm  that  we  cannot  draw  an  indict- 
ment against  a  nation.  I  am  not  arraigning  the  individual  citizens 
who  compose  the  great  parties  as  guilty  of  bribery  or  corruption. 
As  individuals  they  deprecate  and  denounce  them.  But  as  parti- 
sans they  sustain  the  bribers  and  corrupters.  The  drivers  of  the 
machine  are  necessarily  few,  but  they  are  also  the  drivers  of  the 
party,  and  substantially  they  are  the  party.  The  individual  parti- 
al! for*  ed  to  excuse  himself  can  only  say  that  it  is  a  bad  business, 
but  that  his  party  ma<  hine  is  no  worse  than  the  other.  This  was 
the  plea  "i  Thaddeus  Stevens,  the  leader  of  his  party  in  the  House 


»5 

of  Representatives,  who  is  said  to  have  asked  in  a  contested  elec- 
tion case,  "  which  is  our  damned  rascal  ?  "  in  order  that  he  might 
vote  for  the  right  wrong.  So  far  as  the  mere  fact  is  concerned, 
however,  the  plea  that  the  other  machine  is  equally  bad  is  un- 
doubtedly sound.  When  Theodore  Parker  delivered  his  tremen- 
dous discourse  on  Daniel  Webster,  to  which  Rums  Choate's 
eulogy  at  Dartmouth  College  was  the  magnificent  but  pathetically 
futile  reply,  a  fervent  admirer  of  Webster  declared,  energetically, 
that  Parker's  discourse  was  the  most  outrageous  deliverance  he 
had  ever  heard,  "  and  the  worst  of  it  is,"  he  said,  "  that  it  is  true." 
When  the  supporter  of  one  party  machine  defends  himself  with 
the  rueful  apology  that  the  other  party  machine  is  quite  as  bad, 
the  worst  of  it  is  that  it  is  true. 

If  I  am  telling  the  truth,  it  is  plain  that  when  the  control  of 
patronage  passed  from  royal  prerogative  to  popular  party,  the 
spirit  and  purpose  of  its  exercise  did  not  substantially  change.  A 
hundred  years  ago  in  England  the  king  bought  votes  in  Parlia- 
ment; to-day  in  America  party  buys  votes  atthepolls.  The  party 
system  has  subjected  thte  citizen  to  the  machine,  and  its  first  great 
resource  is  the  bribery  fund  of  patronage.  It  is  the  skilful  annual 
expenditure  of  sixty  millions  of  public  money  in  the  national 
arena,  and  by  that  of  thirty  millions  in  the  municipal  contests  of 
New  York  alone,  not  by  educational  arguments  and  appeals  to 
reason,  that  the  machine  or  the  managers  of  parties  attempt  to  se- 
cure or  maintain  their  ascendancy.  Tammany  Hall  defends  itself 
as  Hume  defended  the  king.  The  plea  of  both  is  the  same.  The 
king  must  maintain  the  crown  against  the  parliament,  and  he  can 
do  it  only  by  corruption,  said  Hume.  Party  is  necessary,  says 
Tammany,  but  party  organization  can  be  made  effective  only  by 
workers.  Workers  must  be  paid,  and  the  patronage  of  the  gov- 
ernment, that  is  to  say  the  emolument  of  place,  is  the  natural  fund 
for  such  payment.  This  is  the  simple  plea  of  the  spoils  system. 
It  places  every  party  on  a  wholly  venal  basis.  Under  its  control 
party  is  no  longer  a  combination  of  citizens  for  public  ends;  it  is 


i6 

a  trading  company  seeking  the  advantage  of  the  leading  partners. 
It  is  the  selfishness  of  the  individual,  not  the  public  spirit  of  the 
citizen,  upon  which  it  rests.  And  this  view  has  various  conse- 
quences. 

If  public  money  may  be  properly  given  as  a  private  reward, 
the  givers  may  decide  upon  what  terms  it  shall  be  given.  This  is 
frankly  asserted  by  Tammany,  and  in  this  it  speaks  for  every  party 
machine.  It  asks  plainly,  why  should  not  a  judge  who  is  elected 
by  us  for  a  term  of  years,  with  a  salary  of  fifteen  thousand  dollars 
a  year,  and  who  except  for  us  could  not  be  elected,  pay  to 
Tammany  the  very  moderate  commission  of  ten  thousand  dollars 
for  his  election,  which  Tammany  guarantees?  This  is  the  doc- 
trine of  political  assessments  in  the  Custom  House  and  Post  Office 
and  every  branch  of  the  service.  It  is  rent  paid  for  the  place.  It 
is  tribute  to  the  party  for  the  personal  favor  of  appointment. 
"  Why  should  not  a  man  pay  for  benefits  ?  Why  should  not  those 
who  are  elected  to  well-salaried  offices,"  asks  Tammany,  "  pay  the 
expenses  of  the  election  ?  Who  are  so  much  interested  in  the 
election  as  its  beneficiaries  ?  "  it  inquires,  and  it  asks  candidly,  be- 
cause the  truth  that  the  people  ordain  elections  for  their  own  bene- 
fit and  not  for  the  private  advantange  of  the  candidates,  Tammany 
not  only  does  not  believe,  but  when  stated  does  not  comprehend. 
And  this  view  of  Tammany  is  the  view  not  only  of  each  party 
machine,  but  a  large  majority  of  both  parties.  Tammany  is  called 
a  gang  of  public  robbers  without  political  principles,  an  obscene 
fungus  fattening  upon  the  political   corruption    engendered   by   a 

•  i  ity.  But  it  is  the  natural  spawn  of  the  spoils  system.  It 
is  the  mirror  in  which  party  as  now  organized  among  us  is  re- 
flected, and  when  party  contemplates  the  image  of  that  dia- 
monded savage  with  his  scalping  knife  of  spoils  it  may  well  recall 
the  title  of  Rossetti's  picture,  "How  they  met  themselves." 

This  sophistr\  of  the    spoils    extends    itself  readily  beyond 

•ions  and  appointments  and  assessments  in  the  Civil  Service, 
not  only  into  the   whole   political  system,  but  into  every  depart- 


i7 

ment  of  the  national  life.  It  is  undoubtedly  true  that,  whether 
there  were  a  spoils  system  or  not,  great  interests  of  all  kinds,  in 
the  pursuit  of  their  own  advantage,  would  always  attempt  to 
bribe  legislatures,  and  that  public  officers  and  voters  would  still 
be  bought  at  the  polls.  But  it  is  not  true  that  such  attempts 
would  be  made  or  would  succeed  under  all  circumstances.  Chol- 
era and  typhus  may  not  be  wholly  prevented  by  the  wisest  san- 
itary care.  But  cleanly,  well  drained,  and  prudent  neighborhoods 
are  much  less  exposed  to  their  ravages  than  those  which  are 
abandoned  to  foulness  of  every  kind  and  degree.  The  spoils  sys- 
tem is  a  moral  pestilence,  bred  of  ignorance,  carelessness  and 
knavery,  which  invites  corruption  as  filth  invites  disease.  A  com- 
munity which  holds  that  a  public  office  is  a  private  benefit  for 
which  the  recipient  ought  to  pay,  or  that  citizens  of  all  parties  in 
a  free  government  may  be  justly  taxed  for  the  workers  of  a  party, 
would  hardly  frown  upon  the  proposition  that  the  beneficiary  of  a 
law  may  properly  pay  for  its  passage.  I  do  not  say  that  the  cases 
are  exactly  parallel,  but  the  moral  laxity  and  blindness  in  the  one 
case  would  extend  naturally  and  readily  to  the  other.  So  long  as 
it  is  held  that  the  public  money  may  be  spent  by  a  party  for  its 
own  benefit,  which  means  that  in  a  country  where  party  domi- 
nance should  depend  upon  honest  preference  of  its  policy,  the 
dominant  party  may  properly  pay  sixty  millions  of  dollars  from 
the  public  treasury  for  votes,  so  long  it  will  be  as  impossible  to 
stem  the  corruption  which  threatens  us  on  every  side  as  to  stay 
the  resistless  plunge  of  Niagara. 

We  are  approaching  the  third  Presidential  election  since  the 
League  was  organized.  Does  any  intelligent  observer  doubt  that 
the  party  of  administration  controlling  the  vast  salary  fund  of  the 
Civil  Service,  which  is  practically  a  corruption  fund,  enters  upon 
the  campaign  with  an  immense  but  wholly  illicit  advantage? 
Like  every  administration  party,  it  is  justly  entitled  to  every  ad- 
vantage that  arises  from  a  wise  policy,  from  the  honest  and  effi- 
cient  conduct  of    affairs,    from    strict   adhesion — if    it    has  ad- 


i8 

hered — to  the  promises  by  which  it  solicited  public  support,  and 
from  the  faithful  fulfillment— if  it  has  fulfilled  them — of  voluntary 
executive  pledges.  To  all  these  legitimate  advantages  the  party 
is  entitled.  But  so  far  as  its  administration  has  expended  sixty 
millions  of  dollars  in  salaries  with  a  view  to  the  next  election  and 
to  the  continuance  of  the  party  in  power,  so  far  it  has  betrayed 
the  principle  of  popular  government,  because  so  far  it  has  delib- 
erately bought  party  support  with  public  money.  The  disposition 
of  that  fund  was  committed  to  it  in  trust  for  the  public  welfare,  and 
every  cent  of  it  which  this  administration  has  spent  to  advance  a 
party  interest  has  been  spent  in  betrayal  of  a  public  trust.  If  the 
national  patronage  fund  were  six  hundred  millions  of  dollars  in- 
stead of  sixty,  it  is  not  impossible  that,  in  the  present  develop- 
ment of  the  party  system,  the  party  of  this  administration,  as  of 
any  other,  by  the  shrewd  expenditure  of  that  sum  might  maintain 
itself  in  power.  But  the  offense  is  not  measured  by  figures.  The 
abuse  of  a  trust  of  sixty  millions  is  morally  as  great  as  abuse  of 
a  trust  ten  times  as  large. 

It  is  not  an  abuse  peculiar  to  this  administration.  There  has 
been  no  administration  since  that  of  John  Quincy  Adams  which 
has  not  done  the  same  thing.  It  was  long  done  amid  general 
public  apathy  arising  from  the  good-natured  and  careless  feeling 
that  it  was  the  natural  order  of  politics,  the  common  law  of  par- 
ties. It  grew  up  gradually  amid  general  ignorance  of  its  tendencv 
and  public  indifference.  The  spoils  system  may  plead  that, 
although  a  breach  of  the  earlier  tradition  in  national  politics,  it  is 
really  as  old  in  New  York  and  nearly  as  old  in  Pennsylvania  as 
parties  themselves,  and  that  it  has  grown  strong  in  general  acqui- 
in  e.  But  that  is  only  to  say  that  public  evils  and  abuses  do 
not  arrest  attention  and  arouse  organized  resistance  until  they  are 

to  be  public  perils.  That  is  now  distinctly  seen,  and  this 
League  is  the  living,  active,  aggressive  witness  of  the  happy 
awakening  of  the  public  mind  to  the  fact  that  the   prostitution  of 

uage  to  the  maintenance  of  party  power  imperils  liberty  to 


J9 

day  in  a  republic  no  less  than  the  arbitrary  will  of  a  king  imper- 
illed it  in  a  monarchy. 

In  appealing  to  public  opinion  to  bind  the  executive  power 
still  more  closely,  by  restricting  the  license  of  party  in  the  interest 
of  the  whole  people,  we  propose  nothing  which  has  not  been  often 
done.  The  very  fact  that  party  is  a  convenient  agency,  and  that 
its  disposition  is  to  magnify  its  authority,  is  the  conclusive  reason 
for  vigilant  observation  of  its  conduct  and  for  wholesome  checks 
upon  its  action.  Party  is  a  clever  servant,  like  Steerforth's  man 
Littiraer  in  David  Copperfield.  But  the  cleverer  he  is  the 
more  insolent,  if  permitted,  he  is  likely  to  become,  and  the  more 
firmly  he  needs  to  be  disciplined.  Party  is  the  servant  of  the 
people,  but  it  is  so  clever  that  it  tends  to  become  practically  mas- 
ter, and  bullies  the  individual  citizen  as  the  clever  Littimer  set- 
ting the  table  and  stirring  the  fire,  overpowered  with  awe,  poor 
little  shrinking  David.  Those  who  grovel  before  the  party  as  the 
courtiers  in  Siam  crawl  on  their  bellies  before  the  king,  forget  that 
the  people  are  really  master  and  often  break  from  their  good- 
natured  indifference  to  teach  party  its  place.  There  is,  for  in- 
stance, in  this  country,  a  public  opinion  which  has  the  force  of 
law  that  the  judicial  bench,  the  tribunal  of  ultimate  appeal  even 
in  questions  of  elections,  whether  the  judges  are  appointed  or 
elected,  shall  be  independent  of  party  partiality  and  influence,  and 
it  is  a  happy  fact  that  the  bench  is  so  absolutely  non-partisan  that 
the  infrequent  exceptions  to  the  rule,  when  they  occur,  justly 
startle  the  community  as  with  a  shock  that  threatens  the  founda- 
tions of  social  order.  Another  illustration  of  this  suspicion  of 
party  is  the  condition  frequently  imposed  by  law  upon  the  execu- 
tive appointment  of  Commissions  charged  with  important  public 
duties,  that  the  members  shall  not  be  all  drawn  from  one  polit- 
ical party.  But  the  most  striking  illustration  of  a  sane  public  sen- 
timent which  recoils  from  the  abuse  of  executive  power  by  party 
and  of  the  intervention  of  the  people  to  correct  it,  is  found  in  the 
political  history  of  New  York,  the  State  in  which  the  spoils  sys- 


tern  was  introduced  with  the  rise  of  parties  under  the  Constitution, 
and  which  for  the  first  twenty-five  years  of  the  century  witnessed 
the  worst  excesses  of  party  tyranny. 

When  the  State  Constitution  was  adopted,  in  1777,  in  order 
to  curb  the  executive  power,  a  Council  of  appointment  for  all  State 
officers  was  elected  by  one  house  of  the  legislature  from  the  mem- 
bers of  the  other,  of  which  Council  the  Governor  was  made  Pres- 
ident, with  a  casting  vote.  For  some  years  before  parties  were 
definitely  organized,  its  function  was  honestly  discharged  to  the 
public  satisfaction,  and  upon  the  true  principles  of  the  public  ser- 
vice. Political  removals  was  practically  unknown  until  as  par- 
ties arose  under  the  Constitution,  the  Council  of  Appointment  was 
swiftly  transferred  into  a  clean -sweeping  party  machine,  and  for 
the  first  twenty  years  of  the  century  its  action  was  merciless.  In 
1820  the  Council  controlled  about  15,000  appointments  in  a  State 
where  there  were  but  145,000  voters.  A  change  in  its  party  ma- 
jority inaugurated  an  orgy  of  plunder.  The  public  service  of  the 
State  after  an  election  was  looted  like  a  Chinese  city  after  its  cap- 
ture by  barbarians.  The  party  proscription  was  complete,  and 
among  a  healthy  and  vigorous  people  it  became  also  intolerable. 
The  evil  wrought  its  own  cure.  There  was  a  general  demand  for 
the  abolition  of  the  Council,  and  in  182 1  109,000  votes  against 
35,000  demanded  its  abolition,  and  the  clean  sweeping  party  ma- 
chine was  destroyed  by  the  unanimous  vote  of  the  Constitutional 
Convention.  This  was  not  a  party  victory,  it  was  the  act  of  the 
people  regulating  the  executive  power  by  curbing  the  arbitrary  will 
of  party.  The  appointing  power  was  distributed  among  different 
agen<  ies,  where  it  still  remains,  and  as  its  abuse  by  party,  although 
gre  Ltlj  redu(  ed,  still  remained  under  the  changed  form,  the  people 
still  further  abridged  it  by  the  Civil  Service  Reform  law  of  1883, 
a  measure  in  direct  and  logical  succession  from  Magna  Charta 
and  all  the  greal  muniments  of  political  liberty. 

This  is  the  law,  which  in  its  limited  operation  is  an  undis- 
puted   benefit,   that    we    would    apply    to    every    branch    of   the 


public  service,  National,  State  and  Municipal,  to  which  it  is  ap- 
plicable. By  restraining  the  arbitrary  power  of  party  we  would 
promote  honest  administration  of  the  Government.  But  when  we 
say  that  our  aim  is  honest  government,  we  do  not  say  that  the 
Civil  Service  is  dishonest.  It  is,  therefore,  no  reply  to  our  de- 
mand to  allege  that  the  percentage  of  loss  to  the  Government  in 
the  collection  of  the  revenue  is  inconsiderable.  What  we  affirm  is 
that  the  theory  which  regards  places  in  the  public  service  as 
prizes  to  be  distributed  after  an  election  like  plunder  after  a  bat- 
tle, the  theory  which  perverts  public  trusts  into  party  spoils, 
making  public  employment  dependent  upon  personal  favor  and 
not  on  proved  merit,  necessarily  ruins  the  self-respect  of  public 
employees,  destroys  the  function  of  party  in  a  republic,  prostitutes 
elections  into  a  desperate  strife  for  personal  profit  and  degrades 
the  national  character  by  lowering  the  moral  tone  and  standard  of 
the  country. 

Four  years  ago,  as  the  Presidential  election  approached,  the 
League  stated  in  some  detail  the  reasons  for  its  dissatisfaction 
with  the  administration  of  that  time.  It  tested  the  administration 
by  the  simple  standard  of  reform,  and  all  that  it  could  say  was 
that  the  scope  of  the  classified  service  had  been  somewhat  en- 
larged, and  that  the  rules  and  regulations  had  been  revised  and 
improved.  It  declared  that  the  general  party  change  in  the  service 
which  had  followed  the  inauguration  of  the  new  President  was 
not  demanded  by  the  welfare  of  the  service  itself,  nor  by  any  public 
advantage  whatever,  and  was  due  solely  to  a  partisan  pressure 
for  partisan  objects,  which  unfortunately  the  President  had  not 
resisted.  But  it  will  not  be  forgotten  not  only  that  the  party  of 
the  President  had  not  demanded  reform,  but  that  its  controlling 
sentiment  was  hostile  to  it.  All  that  was  done  under  the  last  ad- 
ministration, and  what  was  done  gave  the  question  of  reform  a 
place  in  practical  politics  which  it  will  not  lose  until  the  reform  is 
fully  achieved — was  done  by  the  President  alone.  Except  for 
his  courage  and  fidelity  to  his  personal  convictions,  the  reform 


22 

law  of  1883  would  have  been  practically  nullified,  and  the  reform 
ignored  and  discarded.  Tried  by  the  standard  of  absolute  re- 
form, he  failed  as  President  Grant  failed  ten  years  before,  and  for 
the  same  reason — the  hostility  of  his  party.  But  tested  by  the 
actual  situation  of  to-day,  notwithstanding  the  executive  yielding 
to  party  pressure,  the  pure  flame  of  reform  sentiment  not  only 
was  not  extinguished  during  the  late  administration,  but  burned 
more  brightly  in  the  public  mind  as  the  administration  ended — 
burned  so  brightly,  indeed,  that  the  opposition  party,  in  the  plat- 
form upon  which  they  carried  the  election,  made  the  strongest 
profession  of  reform  faith  and   purpose  that  any  party  ever  made. 

The  present  administration  came  into  power,  not  with  the 
usual  vague  platitude  upon  the  subject,  but  with  a  definite  prom- 
ise of  reform  and  the  distinct  pledge  to  fulfill  its  pledges.  But  it 
celebrated  the  success  of  its  party  with  a  wild  debauch  of  spoils 
in  which  its  promises  and  pledges  were  the  meats  and  the  drinks 
that  were  riotously  consumed.  Nevertheless,  the  reform  law  has 
been  as  faithfully  observed  as  by  its  predecessor,  and  the  scope  of 
the  reformed  service  has  been  greatly  enlarged.  The  Secretary 
of  the  Navy,  in  the  interest  of  the  public,  and  he  could  have 
done  his  party  also  no  greater  service,  has  introduced  the  reform 
into  the  skilled  and  unskilled  labor  system  of  the  navy  yards.  In 
his  late  speech  in  Rhode  Island,  a  carefully  and  skilfully  prepared 
defense  of  the  administration  and  the  strongest  presentation  of 
its  claims  to  public  confidence  that  probably  will  be  made  dur- 
ing the  pending  campaign,  Secretary  Tracy  says:  "I  believe  I 
am  justified  in  saying  that,  so  far  as  its  administration  is  con- 
cerned, the  navy  has  never  been  treated  so  little  in  the  spirit  of  a 
party  question  as  it  is  to-day;  the  regulations  of  the  department 
within  the  last  year  have  eradicated  all  political  considerations 
from  the  employment  of  navy-yard  labor,  and  have  made  that 
employment  dependent  alone  upon  the  skill  and  efficiency  of  the 
workmen." 


23 

A  more  signal  illustration  of  the  practical  progress  of  reform 
cannot  be  found,  and  when  we  add  to  this  action  of  a  Republican 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  the  fact  that  a  Democratic  member  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  has  unanimously  reported  from  the  com- 
mittee of  which  he  is  chairman  a  bill  to  make  the  order  of  the 
Secretary  in  one  Department  the  law  in  all  Departments  of  the 
government,  it  is  plain  that  the  beneficent  flame  of  reform  of  which 
I  spoke  is  in  no  danger  of  extinction.  The  President  has  also 
somewhat  extended  the  classified  service,  and  has  authorized  open 
voluntary  competitions  for  promotions,  while  the  Postmaster-Gen- 
eral had  already  adopted  the  principle  of  competitive  promotion 
in  his  department.  It  is  the  Post  Office  Department,  however, 
the  largest  patronage  branch  of  the  government,  which  has  been 
ruthlessly  ravaged  under  this  administration  by  the  old  abuse.  At 
the  same  time,  again,  in  the  House  of  Representatives  bills  have 
been  introduced  regulating  the  appointment  of  all  postmasters 
upon  reform  principles. 

Yet  while  this  steady  advance  in  one  of  the  most  fundamental 
of  political  reforms  proceeds,  the  party  platforms  of  the  last  year 
have  barely  mentioned  it,  and  in  the  hot  party  campaigns  of  the 
autumn  and  of  the  spring,  party  orators  have  foreborne  even  to 
compliment  it,  lest  haply  some  vote  might  be  lost.  The  explana- 
tion of  this  apparent  inconsistency  and  this  evident  avoidance  and 
silence,  is,  however,  not  difficult.  Civil  Service  reform  proposes 
to  restrict  the  arbitrary  power  of  party.  It  does  not,  of  course, 
contemplate  the  dissolution  of  parties  or  suppose  that  popular 
government  will  be  carried  on  without  the  organization  of  citizens 
who  desire  to  promote  public  policies  upon  which  they  agree.  In- 
deed, the  reform  will  necessarily  promote  the  legitimate  power  of 
party  by  making  it  a  representative  of  opinion  to  a  degree,  which 
under  the  spoils  system,  is  impossible.  But  as  party  has  now  be- 
come largely  a  machine,  oiled  by  bribery  and  corruption  in  the 
form  of  patronage  and  money,  and   as   the   result   of  elections  is 


24 

coming,  in  the  popular  belief,  not  to  indicate  the  popular  will,  but 
to  signify  merely  the  preponderance  of  "boodle"  on  one  side  or 
the  other,  party  machines  no  more  favor  civil  service  reform  than 
kings  favor  the  restriction  of  the  royal  prerogative. 

But  it  is  by  party  action,  nevertheless,  that  reform  must 
be  secured.  Why,  then,  do  we  anticipate  success  ?  Because  party 
itself  is  finally  subject  to  public  opinion,  and  whatever  the  machine 
may  wish  it  is  at  last  obliged  to  conform  to  public  opinion  as  a 
sailing  ship  to  the  wind.  There  is  already  a  peculiarly  intelligent 
and  influential  reform  opinion,  an  opinion  with  independent  votes, 
of  which  party  machines  are  conscious,  and  to  which  they  now 
formally  defer.  It  is  an  opinion  which  is  known  to  public  officers 
who  often  share  it,  and,  taught  by  official  experience  the  practical 
value  of  reform,  they  introduce  it  cautiously  into  their  administra- 
tion. Once  planted, like  a  vigoroussapling,it  grows  apace.  The  uni- 
form and  undeniable  excellence  of  the  result  strengthens  and  ex- 
tends the  reform  sentiment,  and  still  further  emboldens  public 
officers  to  heed  it.  The  futility  of  theoretical  objections  is  shown 
by  conclusive  experiment,  as  when  the  first  steamship  crossed  the 
ocean  before  Dr.  Dionysus  Lardner  had  finished  demonstrating 
that  it  was  impossible.  The  wiser  and  more  independent  senti- 
ment of  party  perceives  the  advantage  to  be  gained  by  becoming 
the  instrument  of  reform,  as  the  wiser  Whigs  forty  or  fifty  years 
ago  strove  to  make  their  party  an  anti-slavery  party,  and,  failing, 
saw  their  party  disappear.  Undoubtedly  if  the  Republican  party, 
born  of  thai  failure,  had  proved  that  it  meant  what  it  said  of  civil 
service  reform  in  its  recent  platforms,  it  would  enter  upon  the  con- 
test <>f  this  j  'ii  a  more  powerful  party  than  it  is.  But  its  platform 
and  the  dr.  larations  of  Republican  leaders  and  its  observance  of 
the  reform  law,  like  the  same  observance  and  the  reform  acts  of 
tin-  late  Democratu  President,  show  in  what  way  despite  the 
machines  public  opinion,  as  it  strengthens,  prevails,  and  the  good 


25 

work  is  done.  The  vigorous  young  sapling  must  encounter  gales 
and  frosts  and  droughts,  but  still  it  grows,  and  swells,  and  bur- 
geons. So  feeling  its  way  gradually,  irregularly,  inconsistently, 
halting  and  stumbling,  but  steadily  advancing,  reform  proceeds. 

Party  machines,  truculent  and  defiant,  resist,  but  like  kings 
they  yield  at  last  to  the  people.  The  king  whose  arbitrary  excesses 
produce  the  peremptory  popular  demand  for  relief  ordains,  how- 
ever reluctantly,  a  restriction  that  limits  his  power.  So  the  French 
Bourbon,  Louis  the  Eighteenth,  signed  the  charter  of  1814,  and  the 
Prussian  Hohenzollern  Frederic  William  the  Fourth,  summoned 
the  Constituent  Assembly  of  1848.  They  call  their  surrender  moiu 
proJ>rio,  an  act  of  their  sovereign  will.  But  they  know,  and  the 
world  knows,  that  it  is  the  will  of  a  greater  sovereign  than  they, 
the  will  of  the  people.  Our  appeal  is  now,  as  it  has  always  been, 
not  to  party,  but  to  the  people  who  are  the  masters  of  party.  As 
the  English  Barons,  in  the  phrase  of  an  old  English  writer,  cut  the 
claws  of  John;  as  the  English  Parliament  taught  terribly  the  Eng- 
lish king  that  not  he,  but  the  English  people,  was  the  sovereign ; 
as  the  American  colonies  taught  the  English  Parliament  in  turn 
that  the  American  people  would  rule  America,  so  by  every  law 
and  custom  demanded  by  public  opinion,  which  restrains  the  ar- 
bitrary abuse  of  executive  power  by  party,  the  American  people 
are  constantly  teaching  American  parties  that  not  the  parties 
but  the  people  rule.  We  cannot  expect  the  king,  nor  the  Parlia- 
ment, nor  the  party,  to  solicit  the  lesson  or  to  enjoy  the  disci- 
pline. We  cannot  expect  their  supple  courtiers  either  in  the  pal- 
ace or  in  the  saloon,  to  demand  that  the  king  or  the  party  shall 
be  bound.  But  bound  nevertheless  they  are,  bound  by  the  peo- 
ple they  have  been,  and  bound  by  the  same  power  they  will  be. 
The  record  of  this  year,  as  of  the  last  year,  and  of  every  year 
since  the  League  was  formed ;  even  the  reiterated  pledges  of 
platforms,  although  reiterated  only  to  be  largely  broken ;  the  most 
sweet  voices  of  the  stump,  that  sink  into  barren  silence  ;  the  bills 


26 

introduced  that  gasp  and  die  in  committee,  on  the  one  hand ;  and 
on  the  other  the  constantly  larger  scope  of  the  reformed  system 
in  the  public  service,  all  reveal  the  ever  stronger  public  purpose, 
and  the  constantly  greater  achievement  of  that  purpose,  to  add  in 
Civil  Service  Reform  another  golden  link  to  the  shining  chain  of 
historical  precedents  which  by  wisely  restraining  executive  powei 
promote  the  public  welfare. 


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